Contentment
by Cassie Valentine
Summary: He had been searching for tranquility for longer than he cared to admit but, in this moment, he was pretty sure he had found exactly what he had been looking for.


So. Here I am again. This story started out as an entry for the Leopold and Loeb ficathon on LJ. Then I read the rest of the request guide lines I had gotten from my person and had to write another one. Oops. So, here's the first attempt for everyone to read. Yes, the second attempt is COMPLETELY different from this one. Go team me.

* * *

Luke stood alone, staring into the nursery, eyes glued to the two little bassinets both labelled "Danes". He let out another long sigh as he crossed his arms over his chest and tried to wrap his mind around things. 

He had just become a father of 4.

Well, father to 3, step father to one if he wanted to be exact, and he was feeling more than a little overwhelmed at the moment. He had really only ever had moments with Rory. By the time had had married Lorelai, Rory had been in her early 20's and nearly done college and April had shown up in her early teens, mature beyond her age and just as he was really getting into the whole father thing, Ana had packed her up and moved her to New Mexico. They were doing their best to see and talk to each other, but it was still hard.

"They're tiny. Well, I knew they'd be small all new borns are, especially multiples who are early, like them. Have you guys named them yet? Dad?" April asked expectantly as she looked up at Luke.

"What?" he asked, snapping back to reality and the 14 year old beside him.

"Have you and Lorelai named them yet," she said, smiling up at him.

"Nothing final yet," he said. "I'm trying to talk her out of another Lorelai," he said with a smirk that April returned.

"I'm glad you have one of each," she said definitely. "I think it's beneficial to have a younger sibling of each sex."

"Well . . . Good," he said, not really sure how to respond to that comment. If he had thought the things coming out of Rory's mouth at 14 were something, the things that came out of April's trumped them all. "Tired?"

"A little," she admitted after yawning. "It is 4 am," she pointed out to him.

"Huh," was all he could say as he turned his attention back to his kids. He cocked his head to the side slightly as one of the nurses picked up his daughter and tucked her in with her brother, who finally began to calm.

"He was lonely," April mused as she leaned against the glass. Luke looked down at her. "He's used to her being there with him, he didn't know what to do without her."

"I know that feeling," he said with a bit of a chuckle. "Come on, let's go say good bye and I'll take you home," he finished, throwing an arm over April's shoulder. With one last glace at the newest additions to the Danes family, they turned away from the nursery and headed back towards Lorelai's room.

* * *

"I know nothing about little boys," Lorelai told Luke a few days later as they stared down at the pair, happily snuggled next to each other. They had taken the twins home a few days ago.

"I know nothing about little girls," he told her and they glanced at each other, smiling.

"I think we'll be okay then," she told him before she turned her attention back to the babies. "How about Wendy and Ronald?" she asked him. Luke furrowed his brow as he thought about this for a while.

"We are not naming them after fast food chains."

"But . . ."

"No." Lorelai pouted at him for a moment before she moved on.

"We could just call them both Lorelai," she suggested again.

"Maybe you shouldn't be doing this now," he said. She laughed and leaned against him.

"Has to be done. They have been around for two weeks. We can't just keep calling them 'Them'," she told him. "They will be named today," she informed him, pointing a finger. She turned back to her kids and he watched as she furrowed her brow for a moment. "Izzie," she finally decided. "Izzie and Ben."

"Good," he decided. He glanced over at her and sighed. "Fine, Lucy and Ricky for middle names." Lorelai squealed in delight and threw her arms around Luke.

"Thank you!" He sighed. They could always lie later and say that no, they in fact hadn't named their kids after television characters from the 1950's.

"No problem," he said as he wrapped an arm around her. He had been searching for tranquility for longer than he cared to admit but, in this moment, he was pretty sure he had found exactly what he had been looking for.

* * *

Izzie was high strung, which was kind of surprising given her parents.

"Maybe it skips a generation," Lorelai had replied, rather casually, as she handed Izzie to Luke while she moved on to tend to Ben's needs.

"What about Rory?"

"She has her moments. I suppose the plus side is that now I have something else to blame my mother for." Luke shook his head and headed down stairs, towards the porch. They had taken the house Emily and Richard had offered and he was glad that they had. There was more than enough room for when Rory and April were over, as well as rooms for Ben and Izzie when they were no longer sharing a room. The twins were nearly 6 months old and moving them to separate cribs had been hard enough. He wasn't looking forward to moving them to separate rooms.

Luke looked out over the grounds and enjoyed the mid summer heat that was already drying the dew on the grass. As he scanned the horizon, his eyes fell on a large tree, a few feet from the house and he found pictures of tree houses and large swings suddenly flittering through his head. Luke shook his head and smiled as he lifted Izzie from his shoulder to look at her face.

She looked at him, squinting in the light. The look on her face was one he was pretty sure he had seen Emily wearing more than once.

"Hopefully you'll mellow with age," he told her as he returned her to his shoulder as he headed to the swing on the porch and made himself comfortable.

* * *

"You are your father's son," Lorelai declared to a two year old Ben as he fought his mother over wearing a baseball cap to some function Emily was insisting the whole family attend.

"On!" Ben insisted as he wrestled it from her hands and jammed it on over his dark, curly hair, a pair of familiar blue eyes staring back at her.

"Fine, you deal with Grandma then," she said as she took his hand and led him down the hall. "Ready?"

"No," Luke said as he and Izzie stared each other down. Much to his chagrin, she wasn't mellowing as much as he would have liked.

"No shoes!" she said, staring at the shoes in her father's hands.

"Sandals?" Lorelai asked.

"No!"

"The white ones, with the buckles," Lorelai said. Everyone in the room knew that Izzie hadn't mastered the buckles yet. Luke sighed and gathered Ben up, leaving mother and daughter to battle over shoes.

"Have I thanked you for being a boy recently?" he asked as they headed outside to run around for a while. Ben didn't answer, he was too busy trying to get down so he could get his hands on one of the riding toys that littered the drive way.

* * *

"School tomorrow," Lorelai remarked as they watched Izzie and Ben race around the back yard, chasing each other with water guns.

"Yeah," he said as he tossed an arm over her shoulder as they sat in the porch swing, feet propped up on the porch rail. Luke smiled a little as he thought about the two of them in a room with 20 other 4 year olds.

That teacher was in for a shock.

Izzie had, eventually, mellowed and was now much more like her mother than her grandmother and Ben was still taking after his father. The pair balanced each other out nicely. Until one of them got an idea in their head.

"I expect many notes home," she told him.

"I'd be disappointed other wise," he said. "They're too smart for their own good and they don't use it constructively like Rory and April. I blame you."

"I blame me too," she told him with a smile. The twin's rebellious streak was definitely her fault. They watched the kids run around for a while longer before they finally corralled them and put them to bed.

"We haveta stay all day?" Ben asked the next morning, the quartet standing outside of Stars Hollow Elementary.

"Just until noon," Lorelai assured him.

"Then daddy's gonna get us?" Izzie asked.

"Yes," Luke told her. Izzie and Ben looked at each other before the clasped hands and marched into the school. Lorelai and Luke both snickered as they did the same and followed the kids in to make sure that they were settled and everything was in order.

* * *

"Huh," Lorelai said as she looked over the most recent report cards that had come home. 'Exceptional student' appeared most often on Ben's while 'Needs improvement' was a constant on Izzie's. She and Luke both knew that she tried as hard as she could, but like her father, school wasn't her forte. She peaked into the kitchen as Luke and the 8 year old sat slogging through her math homework again.

"How about a break?" she heard him say. "Go play for a while, we'll finish up later." Lorelai watched as Izzie slowly pushed from the table, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt as she ducked out the back door and escaped to the back yard. He and Lorelai locked eyes as she headed into the kitchen.

"I hate math," she proclaimed.

"Me too."

"But you're good at it," she reasoned.

"I hate it even more this time around," he said as he pushed away from the table to get her a cup of coffee. "She tries so hard and never seems to get ahead. Just as she's starting to wrap her mind around it, they move on to something new."

"I know," she said softly as he sat beside her, looking over the pages of Izzie's work books. Her penman ship was already taking on the angular slant that Luke recognised as his own.

"Maybe summer school would be a good idea," he said with a shrug. "Give her another chance to learn everything."

"She needs time off," she replied.

"Just put her in the math classes, so she can have a second shot at getting a firm hold on all of this," he told her. She looked at him for a moment before shifting her gaze to the homework in front of her. She finally moved on to looking out the windows at the little girl who was sitting in the large field that made up their back yard, the top of her head just visible over the long field grass.

"Summer school," she said with a sigh. "I knew that the chances of having a house full of kids like Rory and April was slim but I had hopes."

"Me too," he admitted.

* * *

Lorelai knew she had gotten lucky with Rory. She hadn't been a sporty kid so she had gotten away with never having to deal with things like this.

"I made the team!" Izzie exclaimed as she burst into the house. "They made me the pitcher!" the 11 year old exclaimed as she slammed into her mother, throwing her arms around her waist. "I'm the only girl on the whole team!" she added before she took off to find her father while Lorelai could only sigh.

Izzie was a sporty kid, much to her fathers delight. She played sports as easily as Ben racked up A's in school.  
"Can I get a new mitt? Am I still going to be able to go up to bat, or are they going to stick me near the back of the batting order? I love to bat!" Lorelai heard Izzie gushing to Luke.

"We need to talk about school," he said to her, immediately putting a damper on her happiness. "You're going to be expected to keep up your average," he told her. They had all worked too long and too hard to keep her at a B average to let it slip away now. "It slips and you have to quit." Luke and Izzie looked at each other for a long moment.

"Slips at all?" she asked.

"Slips at all," he told her. She reluctantly agreed and headed off to find her glove and bat, spirits now slightly wrinkled. "Pitcher!" he gushed to Lorelai after he came into the house. "At 11!" he added as he wrapped his arms around her. She couldn't help but laugh for a moment before he silence her with a kiss.

* * *

"How would you feel about going to Chilton?" Luke asked Ben one night.

"Really?" the 13 year old asked. Luke shrugged.

"You're a smart kid. You're always saying how you're bored here, so, why not?" Ben considered this for a moment.

"You're not asking Izzie this, are you?" he said after a moment. Luke glanced over at Ben but didn't say anything. They both knew the answer. "No," Ben finally said. "I don't want to go to Chilton." And with that, he got up off the porch and headed back into the house.

"Are you crazy?" Izzie asked, jumping on brother as soon as she got the chance. She had heard the conversation while she had been double checking her math home work. "You have to go to Chilton."

"No I don't," he said as he pulled the orange juice out of the fridge and poured himself a glass. "I'll be fine at Stars Hollow High."

"You will shrivel up and die if you stay here," she told him. "I know it, mom knows it, dad knows it and I'm pretty sure you know it too."

"Izz," he started as he put the orange juice back.

"I play sports," she told him. "I play sports and I'm good at acting in a play every now and then. But you? You are smart, like Rory and April smart," she said, comparing him to their sisters who had graduated from Yale and MIT respectively. "I don't care if you go to some big fancy prep school while I stay here, I really don't." The two looked at each other for a long time. "Go get a giant egg head."

"Go get a giant pitching arm," he told his kid sister with a smile before he headed back out to tell his dad that he had changed his mind. Izzie watched him go, a crooked smile on her face before she turned back to her home work.

"You are a hell of a kid Izobel Danes," Lorelai muttered to her youngest as she came into the kitchen, having heard the whole conversation. She dropped a kiss on the top of her head before she headed to the coffee maker.

* * *

"You're late," Izzie said as she thrust a cup of coffee at her brother.

"Sorry," he said as he adjusted the large back pack he was wearing before he took the coffee from her. "Paper stuff," he said. Izzie rolled her eyes as she tossed her long, curly dark hair over her shoulder.

"Right," she said, her bright blue eyes lighting up. "_Paper stuff_," she said with a smirk. She knew he had a girl friend. Ben looked over at her and she giggled, pleased to see a blush creeping up his neck. "So, Lover Boy, what's her name?"

"What's his name?" he asked her in turn, pleased to see the blush creeping across her cheeks. She tended to keep her boyfriends anonymous, knowing that if she told him, he'd pull himself up to his 5 foot 11 inch self and go and scare them away. While Izzie was taking after her mother in the tall and slender category, Ben was definitely taking after his father in the tall and broad category.

"None of your business."

"Right," he said as he held open the door to the diner for her.

"Hey pops," she said with a smile as she dashed up the stairs to the old apartment.

"Hey dad," Ben said, slightly more reserved, as he followed his sister.

"Can't stay long," Izzie said as she bounded back down the stairs, tying her hair back as she went. "Promised to help mom at the inn with place cards," she finished as she grabbed a rag and went out to bus a few tables. Luke nodded as he kept taking Kirk's order. Ben clomped down the stairs a few moments later and took his place in the kitchen with Caesar.

"I heard back from the colleges yesterday," Ben finally announced some time after Izzie had left and the diner had quieted down.

"And?" Luke asked expectantly.

"Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia. . . All of them," he said, staring hard at the counter. He really didn't want to make a big deal out of this. Luke pulled him into a hug and congratulated him. "It's no big deal," Ben said when his father finally let him go.

"Hey, until you, April and Jess, I was the genius of the Danes clan. This is a very big deal," he assured the 18 year old.

"Don't say anything yet," Ben said quickly. "Izzie hasn't heard back yet."

"Right," he said. "I'll keep it under my hat." Luke chuckled as Ben headed upstairs to work on his home work. Izzie had gotten word a few days ago, but had told him and Lorelai not to say anything because Ben hadn't heard anything yet. Connecticut State had offered her an athletic scholarship.

* * *

Luke sighed as he and Lorelai drove back to Stars Hollow. They had dropped Ben off at Yale last week and were on their way home from dropping Izzie off at Connecticut State.

"Is this what it felt like to drop Rory off?" he asked her, finally breaking the silence.

"Dropping Rory off wasn't that bad. There was only one of her," she said with a sad smile. "And we had worked towards the Ivy league for so long that I was glad to leave her there. But these two. . ." she shook her head and he couldn't help but chuckle. They had always had a feeling that Ben would go to college but Izzie had been a gamble. In fact, she had almost backed out a few times.

"I LIKE living in Stars Hollow," she had said one night. "I don't really want to leave. Besides, you and dad didn't go to college," she had finished with a shrug.

"Your dad and I didn't go because we couldn't," Lorelai had told her. "I had Rory and your dad was taking care of his father . . . He wants you to go. Even if you do just come back and live out your life here, he wants you to go." The pair looked at each other for a long time before Izzie finally agreed.

"Well, here we are," he said as the town came back into view.

"Here we are," she agreed. They fell into silence as they made their way back home.

* * *

"Penny for your thoughts," she asked him later that evening as they found themselves on the porch swing, watching the stars come out.

"Nothing," he said as he wrapped an arm around her.

"I miss them already," she said with a small chuckle.

"Me too," he admitted as they lapsed into silence. He sighed as he pulled his wife a little tighter against his side. "But, they'll be back," he assured her.

"Couldn't keep them away if we tried," she agreed. They fell into silence as a gentle late August breeze blew around them and the long wild grass rustled softly. Luke smiled to himself as he took stock of his life and decided that this was definitely contentment personified.

* * *


End file.
